Page:Edward Prime-Stevenson - The Intersexes.djvu/384

 From a contemporary English novelist Robert Hichens, a writer of superior literary traits and often of penetrant psychology came early in his career a brilliant little satirical story (or rather portrait-gallery) of London uranianism, "smart-set" cynicism and aristocratic decadence, entitled "The Green Carnation". In this were introduced, with more or less fidelity or exaggeration, personalities like Oscar Wilde, Lord Alfred D—, and sundry others of "the set" about the city. While nowhere being veristic as to word or deed of homosexualism, aesthetic pederasty is an obvious suggestion in the relationships of the two chief personages in the story—the effeminate young Lord Reggie Hastings and the epigrammatic decadent Esmé Amarinth. From the same authour recently has appeared a novel of quite other atmosphere and of more subtle philarrrenicphilarrenic [sic] nuances, in its sincerity of character-painting and delicate art, "The Call of the Blood." Here occurs throughout (in tact as a psychic mainspring of the action), the impulse of hereditary bisexualism, in Maurice Delarey; an artist suggesting a dionysian-uranian—of Sicilian blood though English birth. Between him and a Taormina youth, Gasparo (a type admirably presented) springs into being at once a vibrantly passional tie; though the artist is newly wedded. The background is Taormina; and the local colour and Ionian-Sicilian psychology are truthful. The scene in which Delarey watches the boy Gasparo dancing the tarantella is unique in recent English romance, for spiritual and pictorial management. The absorption of the lad's nature by his passional relation to his patron is conveyed unmistakeably, to the end of the tragedy in which they are involved. Whether the average British reader at all 'understands' the story is another matter, so artistically is it conducted, in diction and incident.

Fiction for young people that has uranian hints